Framingham joins list of communities suing opioid industry

By Michael P. NortonSTATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

Wednesday

Jun 6, 2018 at 3:38 PMJun 6, 2018 at 3:42 PM

In the latest twist to the opioid crisis, the city of Framingham plans to take drug manufacturers and distributors to state court, hiring an international law firm and seeking to hold companies accountable for the damage and rising costs that prescription painkillers are inflicting on that city.

The city is alleging the conduct of the so-far-unnamed defendants in the lawsuit have "imposed a direct, foreseeable, and substantial financial burden on the City of Framingham" with an "increasingly large" amount of public resources being channeled each year to address the defendants' alleged behavior. A city official on Wednesday said information about the identity of the defendants and the timing of the suit's filing was not available.

Mayor Yvonne Spicer, who took office in January, has hired as special counsel Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP, a firm headquartered in Connecticut with offices in New York, Ohio, California and London. The firm, which is experienced in complex business litigation, will try to prove the drug industry knew about the addictive nature of opioids but recklessly promoted them in order to expand the market for their prescription drugs, leading to "huge profits."

Framingham is the latest community to join what the Massachusetts Municipal Association (MMA) this winter called a "nationwide movement" to sue drug companies for municipal costs associated with the opioid abuse epidemic. Chicago in 2014 was the first U.S. city to file a lawsuit, according to the MMA, and Greenfield last December became the first Massachusetts community to file a suit in U.S. District Court.

There were 213 opioid overdoses in Framingham in 2016 and 18 city residents died, triple the number of deaths from 2012.

"This is a personal issue for me, as it is for many of our residents," Spicer said in a statement on Tuesday.

The suit is reminiscent of the approach attorneys general took in the late 1990s toward tobacco, which led to a settlement with the tobacco industry to address some of the public health costs absorbed by the government and taxpayers for the care of people with smoking-related illnesses.

"The pharmaceutical manufacturers misrepresented that opioid prescription drugs were a safe treatment for chronic pain, and grossly discounted the real and known threat of addiction resulting from long-term use," according to the city. "And the distributors knew they were pumping opioids into the city far in excess of any legitimate medical need."

In court, the city will seek an order requiring the defendants, rather than taxpayers, to fund the "abatement effort" required to address the opioid crisis.

Scott+Scott's fees and expenses, which will be limited to a percentage of any recovery, will be paid only if the suit leads to a "successful recovery."

According to the MMA, law firms have contacted Massachusetts cities and towns offering to represent them at no cost, but aiming to collect a portion of any settlement money. Most of the cases to date have focused on Purdue Pharma, Endo Health Solutions, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and its subsidiary Cephalon, Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and Allergan, as well as AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp., Cardinal Health Inc., and McKesson Corp.

When the city of Boston in February issued a request for information in preparation for a potential lawsuit, Mayor Marty Walsh described the pharmaceutical industry as "the main offender and sustainer of the opioid crisis," according to the MMA.

On May 22, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) announced a $150,000 grant to provide curriculums, training modules and other resources to educate Massachusetts students about preventing opioid abuse. The program is expected to launch with the start of the 2018-19 academic year.

"We applaud Gov. Baker for his continued focus on solving the opioid crisis, and we are deeply committed to advancing solutions that will make a meaningful difference for families and communities," PhRMA President and CEO Stephen Ubl said at the time. "The scope of this crisis requires a comprehensive approach, but no measure will be successful unless we take steps to prevent addiction in the long-term. To that end, we must work to improve early education efforts around the risks, warning signs and available treatments for prescription drug abuse."

The seventh annual International Conference on Opioids is scheduled for June 10-12 at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School in Boston. In promoting the conference, organizers described opioid drug abuse as "the nation's fastest-growing drug problem" and one that is classified as an epidemic by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We are fortunate to have the most impressive gathering of opioid experts anywhere this year," conference co-chair Dr. Richard Dart said in a statement.